GOODMAN

A good letter, full of content. 2pp, 8vo. Air mail letter with New York postmark, 30 September 1963. Signed ‘Marian’ and addressed to ‘Mr. Les Tompkins / 96, St Helier Ave / Morden / Surrey’. Writing after the publication of an interview with her by Tompkins in ‘Crescendo’, she begins: ‘Dear Les. Thank you, & Tony also, for the copies of Crescendo - Boy! I was verbose, wasn’t I! I got a kick out of the record review, & thought everyone was very complimentary. Wish Steve Race had been there! He always insists you can tell a female player (and of course I think that is a lot of you-know-what)’.

Cobb's letter is 1p., 4to, typed in green. He states that he is 'collecting the autographs of prominent American editors' and that he would like to add Halstead's, as 'it will not be complete without yours'. At the foot of the letter Halstead has written, in a sprawling hand, with smudged signature, 'Perhaps the will serve. | M. Halstead'. Pinned to the letter is the calling card of 'Mr. Murat Halstead.', with his signature 'M. Halstead' (again slightly smudged) beneath the name. Both items are lightly-aged, but good.

All four items good, on lightly aged paper. Two of the five leaves have small dog-ears to corners. Goodman has done his accounts on the blank reverse of one leaf. An important collection, in which the most important British post-war play agent reveals, in entertaining and increasingly-brusque terms, the criteria by which she judges scripts. Goodman was hailed by Jacques Barzun as 'the greatest living master of true-crime literature', but his first love was, as his obituary in the Daily Telegraph (16 January 2008) states, the theatre.

One page, 12mo. Very good, if a tad grubby. Thanks Draper for his 'amiable but unconvincing' note. 'Do you not know that I was irritated into bad language by being accused of "d - d impertinence? This, too, before I said a discourteous word. - Goodman [the writer Edward John Goodman], of course, rules the Committee [of the Savage Club] and even you have listened to the voice of that Israelitish charmer.' Concludes 'Mais n'importe. Either this evening or tomorrow I send in my resignation. I will neither apologize, nor renew the matter in cold blood.' Signed 'Henry S. Leigh'.